What breakthroughs are at the core of Maoism-Third Worldism?

This was originally published as part of the article, ‘The Sun Rises in the East and Sets in the West,’ by the editorial board of Monkey Smashes Heaven on January 1st, 2008. The document contains the first use of the term ‘Maoism-Third Worldism’ as a particular summary of historical experience and revolutionary theory. As always, reposting here does not imply endorsement or affiliation on the part of Anti-Imperialism.com or the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement. -Nick

What breakthroughs are at the core of Maoism-Third Worldism?

1. Who are our enemies and who are our friends? At the core of revolutionary science today is the recognition that the first world, the metaphorical West, has no significant social groups that can be aligned in any consistent or reliable way with the third world, the metaphorical East. There is no Western proletariat.There are no significant exploited social groups in the first world. There are pockets of exploited migrant and prisoner populations. At present, these pockets are mostly in a state of flux and they are too small to be the main basis for revolutionary change in the first world. In addition, captive nation populations within the first-world, while suffering national oppression, benefit materially due to their proximity to the heart of the capitalist-imperialist system. They are not exploited generally, they are not a reliable and consistent social base for revolution. There is no significant stand-in “proletariat” that can go-it-alone in the West. This has been proven by global class analysis.

2. At the core of revolutionary science today is the understanding that the principal contradiction in the world is between the West and the East, the first world and the third world, the global cities and the global countryside, imperialism and exploited nations. The principal enemy of the world’s peoples is imperialism, especially U.S. imperialism. Revolutionary science upholds the broad united front against imperialism.

3. At the core of revolutionary science today is the global people’s war model associated with Lin Biao. The nations of the first world are the global cities. The nations of the third world are the global countryside. The world revolution can be represented as a torrential flood of people’s war that advance wave upon wave from the global countryside to encircle and crush the global cities. The sun of world revolution proceeds from East to West.

4. At the core of revolutionary science today is the imposition of a joint dictatorship of the exploited nations and their allies over the exploiter populations. This requires a settling of accounts with the first world as a whole. This requires the payment of massive reparations from first world as a whole to the exploited and oppressed nations. This requires the disbanding of the U.S. and Canada (the White nation) as sovereign entities. This entails support for national liberation and self-determination for oppressed (but often not exploited) nations currently held captive within the borders of the first world, especially within the borders of U.S. and Canada. This requires return of the land.

5. At the core of revolutionary science today is the reaffirmation that a new bourgeoisie arises within heart of power within socialist society. This new bourgeoisie arises under the dictatorship of the proletariat due to remaining ideological problems, structural problems and inequalities. These problems resulted in capitalist counter-revolutions in the Soviet Union in the 1950s and China in the 1970s. Cultural revolutions are needed to continue the forward momentum under the dictatorship of the proletariat, thus preventing counter-revolution. The causes for capitalist restoration are not just internal, but also external because the new bourgeoisie can be principally comprador. The Cultural Revolution in China was the furthest advance toward communism in human history.

6. At the core of revolutionary science today is the rejection of both the Theory of Productive Forces and the associated idea that socialism is a mere extension and democratization of bourgeois privilege. It is necessary to reject the full implications of this Theory, thus it is necessary to reject the idea that the bourgeois standard of living of first worlders as a whole is a result of anything other than super-exploitation of the third world. The failure to understand this point allows new-bourgeois and first-world labor aristocratic ideologies to undermine socialism.

7. At the core of revolutionary science is the reaffirmation of the doctrine of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Every aspect of society is stamped by power. Class neutrality does not exist. There are no class-neutral institutions nor class-neutral cultural spheres that can serve as a path for the proletariat to gain power. A society, including its state, is either principally proletarian or principally non-proletarian. This precludes the idea that the proletariat can contend within a traditional democratic framework for state power. The old world must be destroyed with all-round dual institutional and cultural power.

8. The core of revolutionary science reaffirms that people’s war, broadly construed, must be carried through to the end. Without people’s war, the proletariat cannot achieve state power. Without a people’s army, the people have nothing.